


The Gift of Living Dangerously (Or, Richard Nolle is a Prat)

by Chromat1cs



Series: Basingstoke Diaries [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Blood Loss, Editor!Remus, M/M, MWPP, Marauders' Era, Mechanic!Sirius, Post Hogwarts AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-07
Updated: 2017-01-07
Packaged: 2018-09-15 13:55:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9237920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chromat1cs/pseuds/Chromat1cs
Summary: A "Supermoon" is an awfully stupid name for a cosmic phenomenon, especially one that bodes so terribly for two men who just want to avoid all this conflict in one piece.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I fell down a rabbit hole of astronomy for this one, can't say I hated it. There's some description of blood and more intense panic/fear in this one, just so you're aware if that's something you're sensitive to.
> 
> If you've read Ellen Kushner's "The Fall of The Kings," which should honestly be at the top of everyone's reading lists, there's a bit of an easter egg in the last 1/3 of this installment :)
> 
> Thanks again for reading! I so enjoy hearing feedback, I'm really happy this AU is a good time for others as well.

A quiet weekend with the teasing little winds of autumn has invaded Basingstoke, forcing heavier jackets out of the depths of closets and making coatracks brim with scarves. Sirius and Remus have welcomed it like an old couple, all wrapped in wool and warmth on a late Saturday afternoon. Sprawled on opposite ends of the couch with their legs tangling in the middle, both had been flipping quietly through Muggle magazines for the past half-hour until Remus broke the comfortable silence with something Sirius didn’t quite hear through the curtain around his concentration as he read about the latest engineering in Fiat clutch systems.

They took to reading the periodicals as a joke when they first moved in, _Steady adaptation to our situation_ as Remus had put it, but it seemed that looking in on the little world that they found themselves surrounded by was loads more interesting when it wasn’t in a Muggle Studies classroom and the joke morphed into real, latching interest. Sirius was drawn to the glossed, sexy photographs of engines and concept cars that plastered the pages of _Car—_ a bland and dour title that made him laugh when he first grabbed it on the rack. He only started reading the articles recently after accidentally finding himself wrapped up in the story of the origins of Mini Cooper. Remus had taken quickly to _Astronomy Now_ , craving to know more about handling the cosmos on his own now without the Hogwarts library for the past couple years sating his curiosity; there was absolutely something to be said about their personalities galvanizing over the years.

“Sorry, lovely, a what now?” Sirius asks through a broad yawn as he lays his magazine to the floor with a long, feline stretch. Remus gestures back to the page open in front of him with that flimsy-iron stare, the forgiving kind of sharpness like a fencing foil that says I Really Do Love You But You’re Being Insufferable, lips pressed tight in his unique brand of calm exasperation.

“A Supermoon,” he says clearly before worrying the cuticle of his thumb unconsciously between his teeth.

“That sounds like one of those American hero comic books Pete used to read. What about it?” Sirius asks, leaning across Remus’ legs and sprawling alongside him in the wedge of the sofa’s back. The Who record crackling on low volume behind them accents their silence as both pairs of eyes skim the article Remus has open, one pair impassioned and clawing for knowledge and the other taking its slow weekend time.

“So it’s…a full moon that’s a bit closer to earth—“

“Perigee-syzygy.”

“Gesundheit,” Sirius looks up, smiling impishly, and Remus prods his leg with a thickly-socked foot. Sirius looks back to the article and points to the portrait of the author beside the text. “Who’s this?”

“Richard Nolle, American astronomer. Came up with the term so the impatient layman won’t mistake it for a sneeze,” and Remus barely conceals his pride at the jab. Sirius is consistently impressed with Remus’ ability to fling sarcasm back with extra measures of bite, so he winds his arms around the expanse of his jumper and nuzzles him viciously at the junction of his neck.

“Well then, educate your ‘impatient layman,’ Moony. See? I’m not even going to turn that into an innuendo because I care about learning _so much_ ,” he hums into the warm skin, giddy when it coaxes Remus into ruffling lovingly at his hair.

“When a full moon lands on its closest point of orbit to the earth, it’s a Supermoon,” Remus explains, tracing the article with his finger over applicable paragraphs. One of Sirius’ favorite things about Remus is very much the way he becomes professorial in the explanation of topics he’s sorely invested in, but he knows the comparison annoys him so he keeps quiet—“It’s significantly brighter, slightly bigger, pulls tides a little stronger.”

“How common?” Sirius asks, interested in the flow of the information despite himself.

“It says one lands every 14th moon, there’s a table here with previous patterns and a projection of the next decade for enthusiasts to follow…” Remus’ voice trails off as he pores over the list of dates in silence.

“Well…that one is next week,” Sirius deadpans, pointing at _OCTOBER 23, 1980_ printed matter-of-factly amid the rows of dates.

“So she is,” Remus says lightly, and Sirius immediately wishes he could rescind his candor when he hears tight apprehension in that voice. He sits up, curling their hands together, but Remus doesn’t look up from the page. “I remember some of these moons, they were—it’s just a bit of a rougher change, that makes sense now.” He swallows and keeps staring at the article, obviously cross-referencing the dates from past years against the scars on his skin, and Sirius patiently doesn’t say anything about _rough_ being the grossest understatement of a description of his transformations to begin with.

“What sort of degree of ‘a bit’ are we talking?” Sirius asks as he dances a thumb along Remus’ knuckles with mounting worry, which Remus clearly feels and moves to dispel with a gentle touch to Sirius’ forearm.

“No, no, nothing terrible,” he says, making small but assuring circles where his hand rests. He looks up at Sirius and quirks a half-smile. “Besides, we know how to manage it much better these days.”

Sirius returns the smile, but it falters with the mountains of doubt he can see so clearly in the woods of Remus’ eyes. There will always be fear and pain, he knows this, and they really have gotten better about finding new ways to make it easier, but with a Wolfsbane drought since early summer it’s felt to Sirius like the repairs have been harder for Remus than ever in recent memory. It shreds his heart to know he can only help after the fact.

“I just want you to be safe,” Sirius says after a moment through a kiss to Remus’ knuckles.

“I know, Pads,” as Remus thumbs softly at Sirius’ cheek in return. “I think I should use the cellar this month instead of running then. To be sure, for your own safety—“

“This isn’t about me, Remus,” Sirius snaps, his heart dropping, “We need to do whatever keeps you from the most harm, and when we run you don’t come out with broken bones.”

“But _you_ stay unharmed when I use the cellar,” Remus says immediately, voice raised and hackles too as he sits up against the arm of the couch, “I don’t know exactly what the hell this moon is going to do to me, and I don’t want you at risk to find out. Padfoot might not be fast enough or—or strong enough for whatever this does to the wolf, Sirius.” He clenches his jaw and, unconsciously, the hand that Sirius is holding close. “You staying out of harm’s way; _that’s_ what makes me feel safe.”

Sirius brushes a lock of hair from Remus’ forehead and nods steadily, conceding—he has eight days to assuage this mounting disquiet in Remus’ bones and needs to be careful how he picks his battles. The core of his soul reminds him that Remus loves deepest through action instead of spoken truth, and so Sirius reluctantly accepts this as the gesture of the heart that Remus clumsily intends for it to be.

“Alright,” Sirius murmurs, and Remus pulls him back down to embrace him through the lull of difficult decisions. The record warbles behind them amid the silence— _I’d gladly lose me to find you, I’d gladly give up all I got to catch you, I’m gonna run and never stop—_ so Sirius has to swallow the irony and bury his face in Remus’ shoulder, inhale the muted spice of his scent and love, love, love him down to his marrow for the way he hums along with Roger Daltrey and runs his fingers through Sirius’ hair like the threads of a dream.

—

Grease-stained, sweating despite the nip in the air, face buffeted pink, hair knotted hopelessly in a bun that his helmet has destroyed, Sirius enters the flat like a gust of fell wind. He kicks out of his boots, righting them on the rack by the door, and tosses his coat and helmet noisily over the rack as his keys go skittering onto the kitchen table. He rounds into the living room intent on a long bath and stops when a bleary and angry-looking Remus faces him from an interrupted nap on the couch.

“Shit, sorry,” Sirius says quickly, leaning over the sofa to kiss Remus hello. The lips are resistant with the dregs of waking. “Go back to sleep, I’ll be quiet.”

“That was the first good rest I’ve managed to steal in two days,” Remus mumbles. He rubs his eyes roughly before flopping onto his back amid the nest of blankets he had gathered up around him. Sirius steps to the front of the couch, making to close the copy of ‘The Bridegroom’ that had doubtless fallen to its spill on the floor when Remus drifted off, but Remus stops him with an urgent sound from the back of his throat.

“Don’t,” he says sharply, instantly more awake, “you’ve got motor oil all over your hands.”

Sirius raises the offending hands like an outlaw, cocking an eyebrow at Remus as he moves slowly out of his crouch into a stand. Remus looks drained, his eyes reddened slightly and his jaw set on edge despite the lethargy that drags him supine into the cushions. Sirius has always supposed the hardest part of this lead-up to a full moon is the conflict of exhaustion and riled, raw energy that plagues Remus for a week each month—the only ways they’ve found to ease it well enough are either letting him sleep the days into oblivion or dispelling the waves of unbridled restlessness with round after round of dizzyingly-good sex. Sirius far prefers the latter, but it always becomes a question of whether he can pluck his own stamina up to match the increase in Remus’ need. He knows neither option is a possibility if he’s looming in the living room still dirtied from the shop though, so he makes his way to the bathroom to draw hot water.

He steps out of his well-worn work clothes, two layers of tee shirts and sturdy denim jeans that were probably once designer now strained a full wash darker by hard daily use just like every other pair he owns. He summons his wand, enchants the scalding water with lilac infusion, and stretches the strain of leaning into a Mercedes hood all afternoon from his back with a grunt. He sinks into the bath slowly, submerging himself up to his eyes, and exhales steady, burbly bubbles until he sits up to breathe deep and dip his head backwards. His hair comes back up dripping warm when he rights himself, and he lathers in the rosemary shampoo he shares with Remus with a contented sigh.

Ordinarily he would be calling out for Remus to come join him, eager to share stories about the goings-on of the other mechanics at the garage or a new fascination of Muggle machinery that, more often than not, Remus already knows about, but when they’re so near to a moon Sirius tries to be as unassuming as possible until Remus gets back to feeling like himself. Sirius has gotten better at being less needy over the past several months, the immediacy of craving to be wanted replaced by the contentment of existing in parallel one they finally solidified their relationship. He feels it suits him much better—it’s certainly done wonders for his disposition.

“Bugger all, Padfoot, Christ…!”

Sirius opens an eye to the sweet cloying of steam, thoughts interrupted, looking sideways to the slightly-ajar door but keeping still as Remus curses in low tones from the living room. The sounds of him standing up and walking down the narrow little hallway move near, and Sirius sits up slightly in the water.

“You’ve brought work home with you,” Remus says tightly, pushing open the door and gesturing to even tracks of black grease that probably came from Sirius’ sock—the strange and banal magic of Muggle products managing to get into the squirreliest places never ceases to amaze Sirius.

“Ah, I’ll take care of it when I’m through—“

“It might stain the hardwood, just—give me this,” Remus finishes in a mutter, snatching up a towel from the neat pile of linens on the radiator, dipping an edge unceremoniously in the bath water, and stalking back to the living room.

“Remus,” Sirius says, raised voice apologetic and warning at the same time, “don’t bother, I’ve got it. I’m done here in five minutes.” The babbling disturbance of bathwater steps on the end of his words as he moves to quickly rinse his hair and soap his arms and legs.

“No, sit,” Remus commands, and the canine thread of Sirius’ subconscious twinges him to stillness. “Just—“ he sighs exasperatedly and around the doorframe Sirius sees the edge of him kneeling to set in on the footprints with the damp cloth. “Take your time, it’s fine.”

Sirius can tell it’s _not_ fine with the contour of discomfort lacing Remus’ voice, but he doesn’t argue. He sinks back into the water sheepishly and slowly scrubs at the patches of dirt mapped along his pale limbs until Remus follows the cleanup of tracks to where they end at the pile of Sirius’ clothes.

“I was able to get the morning shift on Thursday, and ‘my mother is in town’ on Friday so I’ll have the full day to stay in with you,” Sirius says, testing his footing on the ice of Remus’ patience.

“I appreciate that,” Remus mutters, plucking the offending sock out from Sirius’ clothes and rinsing it thoroughly in the sink. Sirius watches him glower down at the faucet, most of the basin smudged with the grime from Sirius’ hands from washing them perfunctorily, and feels the admonishment before it comes; “Joseph fucking _rising_ , Sirius, can you ever come home from work without whipping the whole flat up alongside you?”

Remus nearly snarls to himself as he scrubs roughly at the edge of the sink. Sirius sighs lightly, sloughs a swath of water down his arm to erase a smear of grease, and gestures at Remus.

“Come on, love, get in the bath.”

“I washed up earlier, no need,” Remus bites out, still trying to tidy up the sink with singular purpose.

“Remus, I’ll take care of that all afterwards like I always do, get. In. The bath.” Sirius keeps his voice calm but firm, in the only way Remus is able to hear reason or coaxing in this state. Remus stops, grips the edge of the sink with white knuckles, tense shoulders, and lets out a tight and violent huff of a sigh. He pulls his shirt off over his head and undoes his trousers, shedding his pants and stepping circumspectly into the opposite end of the bathtub before sitting with a splash. When Sirius smiles at him, there is still vague anger trying to roil around behind his eyes.

“There, see? Easy.” Sirius combs his fingers through his damp hair, untangling the mess of having pulled it back all day long. He smiles roguishly and sighs with flair; “You might be the only person in Britain able to scowl on in the midst of sharing a bath with me.”

Remus keeps frowning down at the water, hunched and cold-looking with his knees pulled up to his chest. Sirius reaches down over the lip of the tub and takes up his wand to charm more heat into the water, and Remus relaxes slightly despite the lack of change in his face. Sirius has learned, agonizingly slowly at times, to be patient in the face of Remus’ petulance and obsessive tendencies.

“It won’t be horrid, Moony, you know that, right?” Sirius says carefully.

“How can you be so sure?” Remus growls, wending his fingers through the water in idle preoccupation.

“Because you’ve pulled through these before. The only difference is now you know what it is.” He coats another layer of soap down his forearms, polishing off the grit of a day’s work before looking back up at Remus searchingly. “Since when has Remus Lupin ever been afraid of a little knowledge?”

Remus sniffs a quick exhale of wry laughter. “Since that knowledge tells me it’s what gave me souvenirs like this,“—tracing the angry tear of pink tissue wrapping grotesquely around his left arm—“and this,” finally looking up at Sirius to point out the pale slash slicing his face from the corner of his eye to the opposite curve of his mouth. “That chart goes back for years, it’s not hard to triangulate the worst of them.”

“Well then Richard Nolle can suck my cock,” Sirius says earnestly, “Supermoon or not you’re still here, yeah? Why let some prat who looks at space all day dictate what you’re afraid of?”

“Sirius, he’s an astronomer, it’s his _job_ ,” Remus replies, but the words carry themselves out in the hue of a chuckle that lightens the lead in Sirius’ chest.

“Still doesn’t change the fact that he’s shit at nicknaming something as ominous as a gigantic fucking _full moon_ , but leave it to the Americans to butcher the drama of it all. ‘Well howdy,’” Sirius chews out in a horribly overextended cowboy accent, “‘that’s a mighty fine moon we have there, I think I’ll call it a _super_ moon! Sheeee-oo! There isn’t any other way to make this sound interesting, no sir-ee.’”

Remus laughs openly, and Sirius grins along with him as he washes the sweat slick from his chest.

“You watch yourself, that country gave us The Doors and Star Wars,” Remus teases with warning.

“Yes, but their Ministry is an absolute mess compared to even _ours_ and their Muggles threw our tea into the harbor way back when. I’d call it even.”

The two men share simple, knowing smiles, Remus finally having unwound slightly and letting his limbs relax into the warmth of the water. Sirius replaces his bar of soap in the draining dish and squeezes a measure of water from his hair.

“Really though, Rem. You’ll pull through fine. We know the cellar works,” he says, fiercely avoiding the strain in his heart when he thinks of having to shackle Remus to a clammy concrete wall and leave him to fend for himself for the night.

“I know. I’m just scared. Overwhelms me a bit sometimes, you know?” Remus’s eyes fight a war of self-assurance and fear when he looks at Sirius, and Sirius’ spirit swells with adoration at Remus’ ability to address his apprehension. Months ago he would have locked it in, suffocated it violently in the muteness of disquietude until it exploded in a rash of fury that would overturn piles of books and slam pots in the kitchen. Sirius leans across the reverberant silence of the bath to kiss him tenderly, wordless thanks for beginning to adopt the better parts of Sirius so gradually.

“And you have every right to be overwhelmed,” he murmurs against the gentle mouth, “just let me shoulder it as well.”

“That I can do, dear one,” Remus hums, but as he leans forward again Sirius stands up with a scattered splash and steps onto the bath mat with vigor. He wraps a towel around his waist, reaches in to pull the drain plug, and extends the other towel on the rack to a slightly dazed-looking Remus as the water spirals away in a gurgle.

“Now in the name of shouldering things,” Sirius says with the air of an announcer, eyeing the lines Remus’ torso with ardor, “we’re going to dry off and put on a record, and then you’re going to fuck me into the mattress.”

Sirius relishes the way the other man stumbles into his own precipitous stand in the receding water and hastily throws the towel on, laughing as Remus thunders from the bathroom over to the record player.

“Forget drying off,” he calls above the frantic shuffle and clatter of setting a vinyl—Sirius’ insides thrum deliciously when he hears the first strains of “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” wend in from the living room as he moves to the bedroom. Remus intercepts him outside the doorway, hand on the jamb to block him and breathing slightly harder from his pell-mell clamor, sweet mercy, how can he be so flyaway and flawless at the same time? Sirius closes his eyes and lets a small sound escape him when Remus tangles his hand into the mop of his wet hair and kisses him just beneath his ear—“we’ll just have to wash again afterwards anyways, you dog.”

—

Three days later, Sirius blinks against the low pre-evening light as he emerges from the pop of Apparition. Remus whips into existence beside him and sneezes violently; Sirius has to chuckle.

“You would think you’re allergic to travel,” he teases, and Remus smiles weakly.

“Gave the examiners a good laugh in seventh year.” The effort of humor clearly exhausts him, so Sirius puts an arm around his waist protectively as they start the long walk to the lip of the forest where the cellar lies. It’s been almost exactly a year since they last had to come this way, and were it not for the circumstances it would have been a gorgeous day for the trek. The sun is just starting to skim the highest treetops with warm, orange light despite the sharpness in the air, and the openness of the countryside splits the sky wide in an expanse of cirrus clouds that are starting to tint pink with the promise of a blazing red sprawl at the fast-approaching sunset.

Sirius stares ahead at the black crust of the forest in the distance, their destination within the hour, and sets his walk to an unconscious autopilot as the rest of the back of his mind focuses on Remus. His breathing is slightly labored, his shoulders hunch with grudging determination, and if one was oblivious to his curse it would just look like his face was flushed with a minor head cold. Sirius holds fast to his side, their stride matching on the shift and crush of grass beneath them.

“Cork,” Remus says suddenly after half an hour of relative and comfortable silence, panting lightly as they round the crest of the halfway mark.

“…floats?” Sirius tries, a stab in the dark of unknown context. Remus laughs, a soft sound, but a flutter of Good Things regardless of its lacking strength.

“Next new moon, I want to go to Cork,” he clarifies. “We’ll get a good bottle of that strong Muggle bourbon, build a little fire on one of the beaches, and get roaring drunk in front of the ocean. You might even be able to convince me to skinny dip,” he sallies, although the weight of the turn in his voice is weaker than it normally is when he flirts.

“It will be November, I’d rather not be pulling Iced Moony out of the Atlantic,” Sirius deadpans, but his insides bloom with love nonetheless. “We most certainly will get drunk though, I’ll snog you silly and you’ll complain for _days_ about getting sand in your jacket.”

“Oh, who was it again that gave me shit for a week about the wine stain he gave _himself_ on his favorite trousers in the throes of seducing me after last Christmas dinner—“

Remus’ breath suddenly catches in his throat and he coughs heavily, a pitching and painful-sounding rip through his lungs that stops him from walking for a minute. Sirius stands close, curling him slightly nearer until it subsides.

“Fuck his moon,” Remus spits, hoarse, once he manages to collect his breath again. Sirius pulls him into an embrace, burning with apology and love, and presses a kiss to the crown of his head. They stand for a moment, catching their air and grasping for the gravity of the night they’re about to face, before Remus pulls back and takes Sirius’ hand, starting them forward again. Sirius follows as he squeezes the too-warm hand firmly in his own. When he squints into the sun again, sinking ever lower behind the snarl of the woods as daylight ticks away like running water, he wishes for the hundredth time for a midnight sun.

When they finally do reach the border where the piney underbrush starts, Remus lets go of Sirius’ hand and walks ahead several paces. Sirius vaguely remembers the lay of the forest, changed over the last twelve moons with the shift of the seasons but largely the same in the heftier stumps and falls of trunks. Remus draws his wand and murmurs the code for his long-term warding runes beyond the slouch of an old evergreen, and a wan purple glow dispels under a layer of wet leaves. Sirius reaches him and helps clear a square of foliage away, still not seeing the hatch itself until “Aparecium _,_ ” Remus says, and the ground in front of them shimmers into clarity with a flat steel handle.

“After you, m’lady,” Remus sighs, the intended lightness of his joking lost in the reeds of apprehension as he glances distractedly up at the bleeding sunset that had started to burn the horizon like a scar. Sirius twists the handle with a grunt, and it takes a hefting pull and half his breath to get it open with a groaning creak as if the earth itself were protesting their predicament. The mineral smell of dirt and concrete wafts up at them, and Sirius bites his tongue against an angry curse as he swings his legs down onto the ladder below and descends.

Submerged in the unnatural silence of the cell, Sirius whispers his wand alight. The hatch thumps mutely when Remus pulls it shut after him and kills what’s left of daylight, so Sirius moves to give Remus extra visibility as he picks his way down the ladder. Remus stops suddenly mid-stride, recoiling at the blue-white halo of Sirius’ want tip.

“ _Ah_ , shit, sorry, Pads, can—are you okay to go without the light? My eyes just adjusted.”

“Sorry,” Sirius mumbles, defeated, as he extinguishes the glow. Left in oily darkness, Sirius waits the few seconds it takes for his own eyes to adjust as best they can. He always had better visibility in the dark than James or Peter ended up with after mastering their Animagi forms, but Remus’ blood-wrought acuity beat them all out by strides the closer he got to being overtaken by the wolf each month.

“Thanks, love.” Remus is beside him and Sirius feels him hesitate before wrapping his arms around him in another embrace, ardent this time on his end, more open for him not having to save any of the day’s precious energy now at their grim destination. Sirius knows deeply that affection has always been draining for Remus, a combination of vulnerability and surety that forces him to dredge up more sensitive parts of him that he would clearly rather let be. But he has told Sirius some nights, bundled close in singular warmth under heavy quilts against the rattling fear that whistles in like wind on the front pages of the Daily Prophet or Ministry whisperings from friends on the inside, that he gets used to the effort the more he expends it. Sirius has always welcomed letting him practice the formation of all sorts of degrees of _I love you_ , and quiet exchanges of touch have been Remus’ most fluent language from the start. Sirius returns his hold like the fold of griffon wings.

“We’ve got about twenty minutes,” Remus says into Sirius’ shoulder, “I need you to tell me a story or something to distract me.”

“You know all my stupid stories, you were there for half of them” Sirius murmurs, “let’s just talk about Cork instead.”

He pulls them gently into a sit with his legs crossed, letting Remus lean back into his chest as Sirius wraps his arms around them. It feels almost like lounging, save for the grit of concrete beneath them and the press of stale frigidity. 

“Good food there?” Sirius asks, trying for as close to genial as he can get.

“Not particularly, but the beaches are gorgeous and it’s easy to breathe there.”

“What, is our particular little hovel stifling you?” Sirius kisses Remus’ temple to accent the absence of any real bite in his words.

Remus responds by lacing the fingers of their left hands together. “It’s a different kind of air, without so much…weight, or expectance.”

Sirius knows he means to get away from the mess that’s starting to ooze across the country out of London. He’s felt it even in the tiny wizarding community in Basingstoke, the single magical pub run by a witch who talks the headlines through with him when he stops in twice a week— _Dark Lord Rumors Return; Dark Mark Sighted North of Wales; Are Muggles To Blame?—_ he feels ire for the Ministry for not being able to contain their own mistakes.

“We’ll bring _two_ bottles of the good Muggle bourbon,” he says, pushing to replace the worrying thoughts with imagery of himself and Remus indulging in their shared existence.

“One-and-a-half of that for you then, you goddamn boulder.”

“But of course, Moony, what do you take me for?”

A spell of silence hits them like a bloom of ink in water. Remus speaks up first.

“I want to go everywhere, Pads,” he blurts, suddenly fierce and urgent and almost afraid. “I want us to see as much of the world as we can while we still have the time before somebody in charge of too much ruins it all and we have to stay put for safety.”

“Then we’ll go everywhere,” Sirius replies immediately. He feels Remus’ heartbeat picking up in the pulse point where he’s touching surreptitiously at his wrist to monitor it. “Where do we go after Cork?”

“Stockholm,” Remus rattles off, “and Nice, and Philadelphia; Barcelona as well. Then I want to take you to an opera in Paris and I want to see a ballet in Moscow, I want to see art in Florence that makes me weep my fucking eyes out—I just want to go places that aren’t going to break into war, Sirius. I need reminders that it will be alright.”

Sirius tightens his arms protectively around Remus and closes his eyes for the onslaught of desperate affection that surges up from the depths of his heart. “I will always keep you safe,” he says softly into the angle of Remus’ cheek.

“The world is much wider than me, Pads.”

“You maddening berk, you _are_ the world,” Sirius whispers, a shuddering echo from the enormity of Remus’ gentleness and absolute primacy at the apex and Sirius’ life setting his voice aquiver, so he grounds himself again by resting his chin on Remus’ shoulder. Remus remains quiet, but he kisses the back of Sirius’ hand clasped in his with clamant warmth. They sit quietly for several minutes and trace tiny patterns along one another’s arms and knees with their fingertips where their hands are joined, and the reticent harmony is only broken by a spasm in Remus’ left arm.

“Right,” Remus says thinly, his voice piercing despite its gravel in the stolid darkness, “you need to chain me in now. Please.”

The politeness is almost an afterthought through his quickly-mounting discomfort and feels grotesque in the nature of the request. Sirius unravels his arms and stands, letting Remus sit for a tick longer as he turns to the south wall where the shackles are fixed. His body pulses with a beat of icy blood at the sight of them.

“It’s Colloportus to close them and then I’ll cast a set of wandless wards,” Remus explains as Sirius helps him into a stand interrupted briefly with another spasm in his leg. Remus slides down heavily against the wall once he reaches it and winces with a painful sound, and Sirius quickly sets the shackles around his wrists with swift accuracy in his locking spells. He sits back on his heels, hovering with a deep attentive frown while he watches Remus pant out the incantations of his wards through gritted teeth. Magic crackles like a hissing cat around his forearms, and the fetters are set.

“In any other situation this would be wonderfully kinky,” Sirius says feebly, his sense of humor shrunken down to almost nothing despite his attempt to soothe the situation.

“Don’t worry,” Remus grits out, his shoulder pulling violently against his will as Sirius twitches back with a start, “you really wouldn’t want the wolf anywhere near your cock. You’re—not missing anything. Promise.”

Sirius draws breath to say something, anything comfortably naughty to keep Remus coherent for as long as possible, but Remus suddenly cries out in a wounded sort of way and lets his head drop, breath heaving.

“Remus?” Sirius asks lightly, clipping his voice back down from heightened panic. Remus squeezes his eyes shut before blinking them open, and he obviously struggles to focus on Sirius’ face.

“You need to get back out the hatch now.” His words are thin, flu-like and anemic with a dizzy pitch to them that sounds like a swerving broom feels. Sirius clenches his jaw and takes Remus’s face in his hands. Remus shakes his head weakly, “I said _now_ , Sirius—“

“I love you,” Sirius says fervently, his monthly mantra for the past year of pre-transformation rituals, trying to hold the lapsing moss-green stare for more than a second at a time, “I love you more than anything, do you hear me?” He kisses Remus, brief and desperate, and could swear he tastes the spice of feral fury on his lips; Remus can only nod half-heartedly, unable to speak through a massive twinge that grits his teeth and tenses his entire body.

“I’ll be back down the second dawn comes in, alright?” Sirius continues, withdrawing his hands slowly while he takes a careful step back. The act of moving away from Remus in pain makes Sirius want to vomit with the havoc it wreaks on his instincts to protect, but he knows he can’t remain here. Padfoot is barely a match for the beast in the free range of the open north woods, and he refuses to let himself think what might happen if they were trapped together in such a small space. Remus lets out a groan through gritted teeth, his limbs flexing uncomfortably, and Sirius feels his insides knot.

“Sirius, leave, please,” Remus pants, his eyes sad and afraid and full of unshed tears in a flash of lucidity when he looks up. “Don’t worry.”

Sirius grinds his teeth like a vice, and he turns to climb back up the ladder, barking a rough “Don’t fucking hurt him, okay?” to the weighty but invisible force of the beast they’ve always personified as something separate from Remus. _Because it_ is, he growls inwardly, hand over hand to pull himself in harsh unevenness back to the hatch and shoulder it open heavily. He glances back down at Remus, an animalistic howl ripping out of him as he wrenches an arm against the shackles on his right side, and Sirius shuts the hatch with a lump in his throat and fire in his ribs.

The ground around the hatch crunches behind him, the permanent wards Remus had woven into the metal automatically crackling to life along its edges as they sense the change happening inside the cell. Sirius watches the faint pink light trace itself into its complicated net, thinks on how utterly brilliant Remus is despite the hand he’s been dealt, and begins to cry.

Sirius casts a familiar series of warming charms into the folds of his coat to stave off the night and lets himself weep the quiet, unobtrusive tears borne in alongside the ache of love. He curls into a tight sit, knees drawn up to his chest, and rests his forehead on his knees. “Please,” he cries softly to whatever might be listening—the eternal low hum of the earth, the cruel keen of the moon, the susurration of the trees bowing around him like a court of creaking subjects, “please keep him safe, I need him to be safe…”

14-year-old Sirius, all made of bravado and abandon, would be confused by this picture of desperation. But then there are many things about adulthood that Sirius never anticipated, chief among them the fact that Remus makes waking up each morning a blessing like it never was until Sirius met him. Sirius has thought often about the way the universe works in the small hours of night, awake sometimes for the overwhelming loveliness of the simple fortune he’s built for himself, and he conceded months ago that what he has with Remus is a cosmic gift to each of them to make up for the glaring obscenities of fault in their previous fates as children. The idea comforts him when nothing else does.

Sirius dries his eyes with the corner of his sleeve, leaning his chin on his knees and staring listless across the deep blue-black of the sky as it rakes out to show him the swell of the moon rising low on its basin. It would be beautiful, huge and bright and rare, if it weren’t so fucking sinister. He sniffs deeply and lies down on his side against the cool press of dirt. _I’m not leaving you down there_ , he had argued valiantly when Remus prepared to use to the cellar for the second time once they knew it worked.

_Bullshit you aren’t_. Remus was insistent, shooting down every request with all the sense of self-preservation that Sirius so deeply lacked. _If you won’t wait at home, you’d best break out more warming charms to wait up above again._ Even then, Remus made it clear that it was patently ridiculous for Sirius to throw himself on a sword that didn’t belong to him by staying up in the woods the whole night. This time is different though—after almost two years of finally figuring out exactly what works for full moons, Sirius can’t shake the haunting notion that Remus would need him sorely in the morning.

With the hatch wards lulling him into a sense of sparse security and the warmth of his coat enveloping him, Sirius finds himself drifting within an hour of tense vigil. A small part of him fights the lead of his eyelids, screams at the rest of his insides to Stay Up, Stay Alert, He Can’t Do This Alone, but the greater sum of all his parts know that Remus spent a very uncomfortable stretch of months indeed Doing This Alone. He drifts into dark, restless sleep like a candle guttering out, with the feeling of falling from a very high ledge and no sight of the bottom at all.

—

The cold is oppressive, _offensive_ really, _Merlin, Rem, shut the bloody window after you take your morning smoke—_

Sirius wakes with a shuddering intake of breath, still surrounded by the press of blanched post-midnight darkness. He wrestles himself into a sit, doing his best to shake off the stiffness in his frigid joints, fingers shaking as he curses his ineptitude with long-lasting warming charms. He checks his watch; just before 4:00 in the morning, rakes his gaze westward and sees the remnants of the moon almost completely dipped below the horizon line. His heart is in his throat—something is wrong, wrong, absolutely wrong, he feels it in the roots of his shivering muscles like profane instinct.

Diving to all fours, Sirius searches the ground frantically for the hatch. He scrabbles at the underbrush repeatedly, leaves and grasses swept aside in a flurry but _Fucking cunt fucker_ , the wards have hidden it again, Sirius can’t recall the failsafe spell so “Apare-fucking-cium!” he shouts at the ground, his pulse beginning to ring in his ears, something is so absolutely wrong, it worms its way into his guts like molten ore, “Show yourself, you fucking bastard, let me IN! I NEED HIM!” Sirius roars. He pounds his fists into the dirt, furious, desperate, manic, and feels a shimmering volt of magic, an unhinged sensation he hasn’t felt since he was just coming into his ability, course down his arms and skitter across the forest floor in a tight radius beneath him. A fussy fizzle of energy like the snap of a lightbulb bursting sounds from beneath him, and Sirius find the hatch blink into vision under his right hand. He claws at the handle, throws it open as quickly as it will move with a brutal declamation of screeching metal and rust, and vaults down the ladder to the rushing sound of the blood in his veins.

“Remus,” he calls, even before his feet hit the ground—his wand tip lights up with the residual expenditure of power flicking from his fingertips before he can utter the spell as he draws it out, and in the throw of stretched shadows, like some perverse stage play, Sirius sees Remus lying in a heap in the corner of the cell.

“Remus!” he tries again, dashing to the crumpled body, crouching to touch his shoulder but _FUCK—_ reeling back with a burst of pure terror when Remus wrenches his torso around to snarl viciously. In the deep-water cast of Lumos Sirius sees feral yellow eyes glaring back at him through a coat of blood seeping down from a gash on Remus’ forehead, trapped in the purgatory between human and beast. Sirius freezes where he is as Remus’ body lurches; thickened breath growling in slow heaves from his throat, shoulders twitching with the ebbing labor of transformation, limbs shifting awkwardly in obvious pain when a broken and wolfish whine finds it way out of him. Sirius tries to calm his racing heart and catalogues the state of the cell as best he can in the tricks of the shadows; shattered shackles on the south wall, blood— _Merlin afire, there’s so much blood—_ smeared along the floor and slashed on the walls in streaked patterns of rage. He looks to Remus again to see him whimpering in pathetic little bursts of half-bayed groans.

“Remus, it’s me, it’s alright, I’m here,” Sirius whispers, his voice shaking with anxiety. He can’t bring himself to move closer, the threat of a bite rooting him to where he fell backwards, until he sees Remus raise a waif-weak hand and grope out blindly as if seeking Sirius’ voice. Sirius vaults forward, careful of how he lifts the broken body close to his and apologizing with a flurrying stream of “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, it will be okay,” and he finds he’s crying again as he brushes blood-crusted hair out of Remus’ eyes and tries to meet his stare. Yellow irises are steadily giving way to familiar green, shifting like dye in oil while Remus shudders in a febrile sob.

“I’m here, Remus.” Sirius holds him close through another broken pule and blinks through a fall of tears. “It will be alright, we’ll fix this.” He isn’t sure if he’s trying more to assure Remus or himself.

Remus shudders, thrashing his head sharply as if he was trying to chase away an errant thought, and Sirius shushes him gently while his mind races to lay out some semblance of a plan to get them out of this hellhole. Remus never wanted them Apparating directly to and from the cell, so Sirius wracks his brain for a way to hoist Remus back through the hatch—Sirius seizes suddenly to tighten his hold on Remus as his body spasms and he bawls in pain again. Sirius’s stomach clenches in fear. _No._ Fuck convention, fuck six-step secrecy, he’ll never let Remus use this fucking prison ever again anyways, let it rot for all he cares. Sirius prepares for Side-Along Apparition, but he pauses and grits his teeth as Remus sucks in a sharp breath and lets out the first full-bodied, human scream of the night—arrival, then, he’s all back, the moon is gone; Sirius feels a wisp of relief shoot down to his toes, but thus Remus falls limp and unconscious with his arm draped across Sirius’ shoulder. In a bolt of clarity Sirius remembers to summon Remus’ wand from the pile of ruined clothing near the destroyed shackles, cradling the solid stretch of Cypress like a treasure into his coat pocket. He grips Remus under the ribs, drawing him close, so close he feels the puff of breath on the clammy tear tracks on his cheeks and welcomes the wild rush of hope for this man’s life too dear to his own to lose now. He wrenches the fist around his own wand in a fierce little turn that tugs him backwards through space in a rush that he can’t quite manage to hear over his own racing thoughts.

Sirius stumbles when the hard wood of the living room zips in to meet his boots, and he ignores the burn in his leg muscles that protest when he staggers to keep Remus upright. _Home, safe, alive. Things to get done now._ Sirius heaves Remus’ unconscious body into the bathroom and lifts him as gently as he can manage into the tub. He draws just five inches of water, hot enough to pink the skin of Remus’ thighs that touch it but not enough to be dangerous if he slides down in the bath, and briefly inspects the state of his bloodied body. The gouges of claws along the span of his chest, wide but shallow, torn out of rage; a rip across his forehead that looks like the beast dragged his head along the wall in confusion; bruises to his elbows, knees, anything that could be bent or flexed to bash into the surface of the cell—Sirius has to look away or he’ll never be able to stay these fucking tears.

He stands roughly, clattering back into the living room and slamming the Floo open in passing to Remus’ desk by the record player. Sirius snatches up a blank sheet of parchment from its pile and picks up a Muggle pen beside it, scrawling quickly in his sharp, slanted hand the request that is more like an obligation than anything— _Bad turn for M. Needs help. Need you here, Floo is open. -Pads._ Sirius barrels into the bedroom, throws open the window to call their owl, a keen little barn owl named Hera, and fastens the scrap of paper to her leg. He sends her off to the Potters and hopes James wakes up quickly.

Sirius takes stock of the situation for the half-life of a second that still feels like an eternity. It’s been a long while since he last felt the warp of trauma on his sense of spacetime, and the disorienting blend of slowly-passing seconds stretching into endless minutes feels like an ocean of salt on the wounds of his resolve. He throws off his coat, kicks his shoes and socks to the floor, and rounds back into the bathroom with his wand drawn.

Remus is still unconscious, head bent back like a wounded fawn, but his chest rises and falls with shallow rhythm that Sirius clings to the notion of like a lifeboat. Sirius kneels beside the tub, cupping and sluicing small measures of water down the red-brown curtain of drying blood swathing Remus’ chest. It falls away like coppery sputum, washing the least of it off but still leaving the largest smears of crusted gore on his skin. Sirius sets in with a battery of Tergeo spells, the word becoming just noise in his mouth after repeating it over and over to clear more layers of blood from the burning-warm skin than it had seemed were there at the outset. Sirius’ insides clench when, even after most of the old blood is clear, Remus’ wounds continue to seep bright, fresh red.

“Remus,” he says, trying for strength in his voice but finding it emerging one half fear and the other half stubbornness, “Remus, wake up.”

He slides a hand to Remus’ cheek, turns his head heedfully from side to side, but his face stays beatifically suspended in deep sleep with no change in the weight of his limbs pushing through his torpor of dark burnout. Sirius flexes his hand around his wand and raises it to point at Remus’ chest, bracing his other hand around the back of Remus’ neck.

“Sorry, love,” he says in an apologetic whisper, draws a deep breath for the most commanding voice he can muster—“Rennervate!”

Deep red light fills the bathroom in a flash, the hiss of it echoing against the tiles mightily, and Remus sucks a wheezing breath inward, holds it silent for a moment as his eyes fly open wide, present, alive with the white heat of awakening pain, and lets out a shout of agony that could wake the dead. A dog barks on the early morning street below and Sirius drops his wand to take Remus’ face in both hands.

“Remus,” he says, speaking over the gritted groans of pain and painting gasps tearing their way out of Remus as he drags himself out of the muddying clamor of disorientation, “Remus, we’re home, and you’re safe now, but you’re hurt.” Sirius meeting his eyes in a sparking union of pain-bright, pinprick pupils. “I need you to give me the name of a Healer to call.”

“What—what the fuck happened? I—oh fuck, Christ, no, what happened,” Remus cries as he looks down at his torso to see the weeping wounds there before Sirius guides his face back up to look at him.

“You’re going to be alright, Remus, I just need to call one of the Healers you know who can come help you,” he says evenly, grateful to his voice for coming out with minimal emotion betraying him. Remus grips white-knuckled to the lip of the bath, squeezing his eyes shut in torment as tears leak their way out and down his cheeks.

“I— _haaaaa, bloody-fucking-bugger-shit,_ um—alright,” Remus pants, reaching a badly-battered hand up to hold onto Sirius’ wrist in frantic need. He doesn’t speak for a moment, clearly steeling his pain tolerance and wracking his brain all at once through the hurricane of torturous pain. “Look—go look in my desk, under where I store—the parchment—“ he bites back another shout and lets it filter out instead in an angry groan as he bites down hard on his lip. Sirius can feel his body trembling with effort, cold sweat beginning to spring up on his ravaged skin. He kisses the least-damaged plane of Remus’ forehead clumsily in wordless encouragement.

“Under the parchment there’s a little notebook, flip to the back, charm the page to see the names and their transfer codes, Basil St. Cloud is the one with the Blood Repl— _FUCKING HELL_ —Blood-Replenishing Potion—“ Remus blurts this all quickly, gasping for several breaths as he collects the wherewithal to finish his instructions; “same drawer, small empty bottle, it’s charmed with Protean, write St. Cloud’s code and my name on a bit of parchment, put it inside, he’ll Floo over within twenty minutes.” Sirius wipes the hot tears of Herculean effort off of Remus’ cheeks and nods.

“I can do that,” he says, nodding wildly, “I’ll be right back, don’t move.”

Sirius is a flurry of purpose and tension, ripping the desk open to retrieve the notebook and bottle. He charms the page in the address book a-scrawl, alphabetical by last name for ten Healers that Dumbledore had passed along as sympathetic to keeping Remus’ secret when they graduated. Sirius finds St. Cloud, rips a scrap of parchment from the top of the blank pile beside him, writes out the codeword for the transferral and Remus’ full name, and seals it into the tiny bottle where it disintegrates with a saturated green glow.

The billow of the fireplace sounds then from the hearth followed immediately by James’ heavy feet and his ragged gasp.

“ _Bloody Morgana risen—_ PADS?”

Sirius whirls around to face him and James meets his eyes with iron severity. Still in flannel trousers and a sleeping shirt, he’s thrown his coat and house slippers on overtop and rushed through the Floo without a second thought. “Why is he bleeding so badly?” he breaths in slight disbelief, gesturing broadly to the splatters of blood on the floor leading to the bathroom. 

“I'll explain later, help me move him to the spare bed,” Sirius says quickly, leading the way back into the bathroom.

“Fuck, Moony, happy homecoming; you doing alright, mate?” James says wryly when he and Sirius cross the tiled threshold. Remus is holding fast to the edges of the tub with shaking arms, bracing himself against invisible, indomitable pain, and still manages to cough out a laugh in reply.

“Been better, Prongs, but at least I’m not still wearing pink flannel to sleep,” he grates out through a wince, and Sirius’ heart hammers as adoration adds itself to the cocktail of emotions rioting within his guts.

“I’ve sent for St. Cloud, I want to move you to the spare bed,” he says as he grabs for the towel hanging on the drying rod. James helps hoist Remus into a stand, drawing his own wand to wick away the lukewarm and bloody water clinging to Remus’ legs in rivulets like rubies, and he provides sturdy support when Remus’ buckles with a spasm in his knees. Sirius wraps the towel around Remus’ waist, presses another into his chest cautiously to staunch the blood there, and takes Remus’ right arm by the elbow when trying to draw it up over his shoulder makes Remus cry out in a flurry of curses. The three men stagger slowly through the short journey into the spare room, and James leaves them standing for a moment as he retrieves another towel to put down over the sheets before Remus crawls, a slow and stiff and stuttering motion, between them.

“Thank you, James,” Remus breathes once he’s on his back, looking up at them like a weathered soldier. James pats a supportive hand to Remus’ ankle from where he stands at the foot of the bed.

“Nothing we haven’t dealt with before,” he says, but Sirius can tell from the honeyed sharpness in his eyes that this is most certainly worse than what they’ve dealt with before. “I’ll put tea on,” as he leaves the room for the kitchen. Sirius stays where he stands, brushing a hand soothingly at Remus’ tangled and dirtied hair.

“What will you need in particular once St. Cloud arrives?” he asks gently, stooping to kneel on the floor by the bed to meet Remus’ eyes. Remus winces again, taking Sirius’ hand in his and kissing the trembling palm with weak lightness.

“Blood-Replenishing Potion, Episkey for all this broken skin, some strong casts of Ferula on my right arm, and just one big cleanse to get rid of all this shit,” he says, eyelids slowly becoming heavy again with the warmth of the sheets of him and the addling nature of such stabbing pain.

“I’ll tell him, you go back to sleep. Merlin knows you deserve it.” Sirius eases the hair back from Remus’ forehead again and kisses his lips gently, relief touching him when Remus kisses back with exhausted softness.

“I love you madly, Sirius,” he murmurs in a raw voice, “always have. Always will.”

“And more for the danger of it all,” Sirius replies, his voice catching shortly, and they share another brief kiss before Sirius stands and lets Remus drop into the dark, cottony thicket of unconsciousness again.

Sirius leaves the spare room with a silent shut of the door drained, jumpy, restless for tea as the kettle whistles its greeting. James enchants the whole tea set onto the table with an efficient flick of his wand, but before Sirius reaches the tile of the kitchen, the metallic tang of blood wends into his nose and reminds him of the bedlam left to clean up.

“Hold on, Prongs, I have to take care of this—“

“Bullshit, sit down, you’ve had enough grief already. Give yourself five minutes.” There’s no ignoring the authority in James’ concern, so Sirius takes a seat and sets to automatically making a tall cup of tea. James sighs tightly.

“Was there a second wolf this time or what? I mean shit, Pads, I’ve _never_ seen this much blood from him on a moon before.”

Sirius wordlessly slides the issue of _Astronomy Now_ sitting plain on the table over to James and flips it open to the center spread by Nolle. James skims the article, paging around the magazine briefly for context and poring over the printed lunar schedule. “Who the fuck names something like this with such a stupid name?” he mutters after a minute.

“My thoughts exactly,” Sirius growls. He heaves a heavy sigh, drawing a hand down his face and closing his eyes against the weak light of the cloudy late morning creeping in through the windows. The exhaustion he can feel start to set in leans on his shoulders like the weight of some great raptor. “Remus knew it would be bad, so he used the cellar again. The stronger pull of that lunar cunt made the wolf go berserk; rammed him into the walls, clawed at him, all the worst of it.”

“Still,” James says weightily.

“The only thing I can think is that it was the first time he’s used the cellar in a full year.”

“What, you think if you’d run instead he’d be okay? Less anger or, what, confusion for the wolf?”

“Probably. I wanted to, but he was afraid of what it would do to _me_ if we ran; didn’t know what the extra madness would do if Padfoot wasn’t fast enough or got overpowered.”

James nods to himself, melancholy approval sketched all over his face. “Say what you will about his stubbornness, that idiot loves you far more than you love yourself.”

“I know,” Sirius whispers, his voice breaking surprisingly as he swallows emotion like a bitter pill.

The Floo suddenly blazes green and a broad-chested wizard with long dark hair woven through with clusters of thin braids steps into the living room. His face is sturdy, with a sharp jawline traced by a silvering beard and hard brown eyes that survey the flat in a single calculating sweep. Navy blue autumnal robes hang from his shoulders, and Sirius finds himself thinking this man looks far more like an Auror than a Healer.

“I’m looking for Mr. Lupin,” he declares in a rich, oratory voice.

“Here, spare room,” Sirius says, standing to walk over and shake the Healer’s hand. His grip is strong, wizened despite his early middle age. “Sirius Black,” he says quickly as he remembers to introduce himself, “so sorry for the uncomfortable hour.”

“No worries, I met with our young wolf several times at Oxford when he was a boy. His father and I are old fieldmates.” Sirius bristles at the mention of Remus and the wolf being one in the same, but knowing it’s a family friend and not just some twit with a stash of potions eases him.

“He passed out again, but he told me he’ll need your Blood-Replenishing, lots of Episkey, a strong Ferula for something in his right arm, and he wants a good strong cleansing charm overall.” Sirius goes through his hasty mental checklist as he crosses and opens the door, his heart fluttering of its own volition when he sees Remus’ sleeping face twisted in light discomfort. St. Cloud is looking down at the floor when Sirius turns back to usher him in, brow furrowed at the spatters of Remus’ blood.

“You should clean that up soon, and yourself as well. Stains like a fright for its virility,” he says gruffly. Sirius glances down at his own clothing, its state complete forgotten in the flurry of the past hour, and sees that he’s painted abstract with angry blooms of russet red from how he carried and washed up Remus.

“I’ll take care of that now, thanks,” he mumbles, stepping to the side as St. Cloud sweeps in through the door. “Let me know if you need anything.”

“Before you set to, does he have any poultices or draughts he normally uses? I always prefer remedying by medicine first, knitting with magic is best used as a last resort.”

_So that’s why Remus favors him._ “Yes, absolutely. Thank you again, mister St. Cloud.”

“Just bring them in when you’ve got them, no rush. And please, it’s just Basil.”

Sirius shuts the door softly and is met with James standing ready in the living room. “Where does he keep his medicine? I’ll gather it all, you clear up the floors.”

“Ah, cabinet under the sink. Um, there’s disinfectant and a roll of bandages, and then a caddy of six or seven phials that he uses.” Sirius heads to the kitchen for a wad of towels and a magical floor cleaner as James ducks into the bathroom, and Sirius tosses a distracted “Thanks, Prongs” in after him. He gets to work on the trail ofbloodstains, yearning now for the banality of the motor oil he had dragged in days earlier. Sirius scrubs in rhythmic anti-clockwise circles as per the instructions on the little box of charmed powder, and he sees with relief that it works as well as advertised.

Sirius lets his tired thoughts wander as he cleans and they flit to the Do They Or Don’t They game that his mind always plays when people are at the flat, always a secretive little surveying of his friends and visitors of whether they know he and Remus are together. Once he found out that Lily knew, before anybody else, it had been written across her features in the gentle flex of her brow whenever she looked at them sitting near one another or moving through the flat in comfortable little paths.

James, precious James as thick as an elm, had needed a different approach. When they had first told him they were more than flatmates—something dearer, something sweeter and much more infinite—they hadn’t laced their fingers together and batted their lashes and given the Well Don’t You See It Now smiles that Sirius had been dreading in his imaginary scenarios of bringing it up. They were sitting on opposite ends of the Potters’ sitting room last spring, Remus on the overstuffed pouf and Sirius in one of Fleamont’s old high-backed armchairs, with James caught in a stand and two mugs of tea in either hand. Sirius had opened the gambit with _James, you ought to know something these days,_ and Remus had stuck to their plan with a compound blow as _Sirius and I are together, like you and Lily, and lovey-like and purposeful,_ delivered in the Lupin brand of matter-of-factness—an easy discussion between he and Sirius earlier that it was his strike to deliver lest it sound like a joke from Sirius’ own too-impassioned lilt.

_What, like—like_ in _love? Off the deep end, writing sonnets,_ in _love?_ James had blurted after a long moment, staying standing as he visibly struggled to unknot his own train of thought.

_Minus the sonnets, plus a bit more snogging and shagging starting back in sixth year, and wham-o, there we are_. Sirius can always recall his nerves then, building like a low hum despite Lily having assured him time and time again that it wouldn’t be an issue with James. After another moment of the mantle clock ticking pleasantly and the sounds of Lily busy with the dishes to mask her eavesdropping floating through the tiny house, Remus had cleared his throat demurely; _We understand if you’re upset, it’s sudden and we just thought—_

Sirius’ heart had pulled desperately at this break in the planned ranks for a fraction of a second before James butted in loudly with _I’m not upset, just impressed that Sirius was keen enough to keep it a secret for three bloody years._ He had broken into a smile then, which soothed like the hiss of water on fire.

It had taken some adjusting in the time following, James clearly re-cataloguing the lay of their flat the first time he visited after he knew to conceptualize Sirius and Remus as one instead of two, but after a month he had fully rewritten the mental script and the normalcy of it all was everything Sirius could have hoped for. Now, as James digs through Remus’ stash of elixirs at the Healer’s behest, Sirius sees in him the drive to help not only his best friend but one he has come to see as the inseparable half of his brother. His heart soars in a heavy, leaden sort of gale.

James emerges from the bathroom and raps gently on the spare door, handing off his armfuls of delicate containers and the other first aid when Basil opens it wide. Sirius looks up from his crouch a couple feet away, peering worriedly between the gaps the two men leave in the doorway to see Remus still asleep on the bed.

“He’ll be just fine, you acted very astutely to bring him home so quickly,” Basil intones to him when he notices Sirius staring. “You’ll just have to let him sleep this off for the rest of the day once I’m through.”

The door shuts again and Sirius returns intently to his scrubbing, scouring up the last of the blood and drying the floor as a whole with a flick of his wand. A particularly gruesome spot that had dripped outside of the bathroom remains slightly stained already, but Sirius really doesn’t care at the moment. He throws the soiled towel in the bathtub and stops into the bedroom, stripping clothes and casting an unceremonious cleanse for the dirt and grime before changing into a pair of jeans and a jumper. He doubles back out and throws the bloody clothing into the tub as well, where he washes his hands and ties his hair up with an automatic sort of motion. He returns to the kitchen and flops down in a chair across from James.

“Fucking slaughter me standing, this is such a nightmare,” he groans from behind his hands as he draws them down his face in exhaustion.

“He’ll be alright, Pads,” James assures him softly. “Might I propose some breakfast, to stave off the shit?”

“You’ll have to forgive me if my stomach isn’t exactly cooperating,” Sirius says, irritated at himself more than anything for the knots of anxiety burning their ruin into his body. He’s starting to feel the tiredness, the long slog of sleeping on a forest floor and waking suddenly into the crashing disaster of post-transformation madness. “Just—just coffee, would be great.”

James enchants the tea back onto the counter, a second nature in his household magic that Sirius has always loved to watch, and within minutes has coffee set for Sirius and a plate of toast for himself. Sirius smiles, small and amused. “You know our kitchen better than we do at this point, don’t you?”

“Half the spells you’ve got imbued on your appliances are from me, I would say so.” James takes a hearty bite of the slice in his hand while Sirius sips deep from the heavy red mug. The comforting zest of black coffee kicks harder than tea, and he appreciates the sensation with a yawn.

“Thanks again. For everything,” he says softly once he rubs his eyes and sighs.

“Nah, it’s a given. Can’t have spent five years helping you take care of him at school and then just sod off to pretend it doesn’t happen anymore.” James smiles at him, toast crumbs scattered in his pale morning stubble. Sirius suddenly feels a well of emotion rise in him and he rushes to swallow it down, gulping at another thick tip of coffee.

“I just—am still afraid of it sometimes. You know?” he says as he stares at the woodgrain of the table.“I’ve never wanted him to suffer, but the possibility of something permanent feels worse these days.”

“Because you love him, Pads. That’s what love does, it makes you a preoccupied and dopey mess.”

“I know. I don’t want to lose him,” Sirius whispers, voice choked and overcome with tightened grief from too much foresight, and without having to look at James he knows they both understand the feeling in the ancient language of necessity. They sit silently for a while, Sirius willing the prickle of tears to stay back as he strains his ears to monitor the sounds of healing magic from the spare room.

“Well,” James says after a measure of time, awkwardly, “I was actually going to Floo over here later anyways. You caught me before I owled.”

“Yeah?” Sirius is still marginally distracted when James chuckles to himself with, what, was that nervousness?

“Yeah.”

Sirius looks over at him, brow furrowed and eyes slightly narrowed, a dumb-looking combination for the vinous stew of feelings just barely being held back behind the harbor of his cheekbones. James smiles, lopsided and boyish.

“We’ve got news, Pads,” he says softly, and Sirius hears what’s coming before he even knows it himself, the perfect combination of words to bring some life back into this shithole of a morning, words he never quite expected from the brother he was never supposed to have until they were right there, aloft between them in the tension of a murmury Friday that aches of stasis—“We’re going to have a boy.”

“Holy shit,” Sirius breathes, one of the fullest blooms of happiness he’s ever felt welling in his chest and pressing almost painfully at his lungs, burgeoning the well of tears in his eyes and scrambling the projection of his brain.

“Yeah, holy bloody shit,” James replies, and his eyes are shining with the sparkle of tears as well, dammit, Sirius’ throat clenches overwhelmingly because he’s only ever seen James cry from happiness once when his parents called Sirius their son— _Merlin, is this the feeling of family?_ Is this what he’s only been able to catch partial glimpses of in twenty meager years of living? He schools himself into composure, bites hard on the inside of his cheek, he can do this, he can keep it together for once, he is strong, he is—

“We want you to be the godfather, Sirius.”

He is an absolute emotional fucking wreck.

He lets out a choked sob in disbelief, as though Fortune could never touch him so boldly, his vision blurring with the paroxysm of abject joy that crashes through the floodgates of his worry and contention. He reaches across the table for James’ hands, grips hard when he finds them, tries to speak, thank him, pray, shout, but with the mess of the night just left behind him mixing up with it all, he can only let his shoulders jump with heavy, freeing gasps.

“I hope these are happy tears,” James teases, his own voice thick with the gauze of starting to cry, and Sirius nods through a shuddering intake of breath.

“Of—of course they’re happy,” he manages to bawl, “I’m going to be a f-fucking _godfather_! This—this is perfect!” and he dissolves again into a fresh wave of draining joy as James crosses swiftly to him and kneels to pull him roughly into an embrace. Sirius holds to him immediately, clinging like he had when James was the first one to find him weeping alone in the astronomy tower after the Christmas when his mother had disowned him; like he had when he knew Regulus was dead and James Apparated to him within seconds of receiving his hasty and confounding message to keep him from smashing every plate in the flat while Remus was away for the week. He has never before shared the brotherly love of happiness as an adult, and it warms him so fully that he feels his fingertips nearly aflame where they dig into the fabric of James’ jumper.

“What are—are you going to name him?” Sirius asks, still struggling to control the ragged jump of his breathing.

“Harry,” James says, and Sirius’ face is pressed further into his shoulder as he shifts his arm to swipe at his eyes. “No family history, Lily just loves the name. Says it’s ‘precocious and timeless.’”

“I agree,” Sirius hiccups, “Merlin, you two—are going to be wonderful parents!”

James pulls back, holding Sirius at arm’s length with the stupidest, wobbliest, most radiant smile on his face. “You think so?”

Sirius nods frantically, carving at his eyes with the heels of his hands as he shakes with a racketing laugh that feels like the trembling boughs of a sunned and fruitful olive tree. He knew this was coming eventually, just never expected the blessed wholeness the announcement would bring with it.

“She’s due in July and already planning the nursery,” James says, “and we haven’t even told anybody outside of the family yet.”

“When did our joke about her being a Ravenclaw spy become true?” Sirius teases with a spasmodic little laugh through the calming of his tears. He sniffles deeply. “Oh, brace yourself, Prongs, I’m going to spoil this child _rotten_.”

Sirius had barely even thought of children since he stopped being one himself. The idea of raising a small human being scared him more than nearly every fear in him combined, so plagued with the surety that he would inadvertently destroy their little life with the fallout of his disastrous point of reference in his own childhood. He had brought it up with Pete once, drunk and listless one weekend when they had been discussing the news of a pregnant Legilimency professor. Pete was sure he wanted kids someday, Sirius had laughed and said he would just be the uncle to everyone else’s without any of the responsibility. The reality of it barreling in now though surprised him—he didn’t feel fear, he felt excitement and joy and the drive to _help_. Sirius had never even thought of wanting to help with anything resembling a miniature version of his friends that only possessed the major skills of eating and crying. He finds he is already breeding a massive amount of respect for this baby.

The spare room opens and Basil emerges, stately and purposeful. “I did what I could to minimize scarring,” he explains as Sirius looks to him with reddened eyes, Merlin, scarring is fine, Remus is alive and Sirius is due to have what he may just call his _nephew_ at this point, the bleakest little Friday isn’t as bad as it felt on the other side of 5:00 in the morning. “The clawing on his chest and forehead looked much worse than they really were, but he’ll sport a new mark from just above his ribs and down across to his hip. Don’t let it alarm you. His arm is broken, which will heal in about a week—I’ve put him in a sling just to be sure until then. He’s lucky he’s got you, Mr. Black.”

Sirius flushes, and without thinking he mutters “Nonsense, my name’s Sirius,” at which Basil smiles with approval for the wit of throwing his insistence right back at him. Sirius blinks, rising to retrieve a pouch of galleons he keeps in his bedside table. “How much will you take for the visit?”

“Oh, no, that won’t be necessary—“

“I insist; we used your supplies, took up your time, of course we pay you,” Sirius calls over his shoulder as he pulls out the little velvet pouch. He comes back to the living room and stops, faced with the sight of James pressing a handful of coins into Basil’s hand.

“Shut your mouth, Black, let me take care of this,” he says sternly. Basil smiles genially, amused by the color that rises in Sirius’ cheeks. Sirius wants desperately to argue—it’s practically baked into his genetic code to throw money around like confetti—but he knows James is all too fond of footing all sorts of bills when his friends are concerned and will fight tooth and nail to do so.

“Do send another bottled call if he needs anything else,” Basil says, stepping into the hearth with a handful of power off of the mantle bowl. “and don’t let him use that cellar again.”

“Two steps ahead on that choice—travel safe, Basil.” Sirius bows his head in calm farewell as the Healer rushes away in a flash of emerald fire. 

“Are you going to be alright here?” James asks, and Sirius is already conceptualizing little mannerisms of his as fatherly. He smiles, pulls James into another tight embrace and hopes he can feel the pride in it.

“We’ll be fine, it’s smooth waters from here.” They pull apart and stupid and hopeful at one another before Sirius ruffles James’ hair. “Now didn’t I tear you away from a sleeping, pregnant wife? Wouldn’t want you to lose your bollocks after only using them once. Get home, Potter.”

Sirius claps him on the shoulder and stands to watch him gather a handful of Floo powder. “I’ll owl later today if you’re not dead asleep,” James says, “Lily will want to see Remus or bring flowers or something.”

“Ta, I’ll let her know.” Sirius waves him farewell in another burst of flame, and once it fades he feels a heavy weight of fatigue truly set in on his back. He beelines to the spare room, opens the door softly, and lays himself gingerly onto the bed beside Remus. Remus stirs, muted for the shuffle of sheets and bandages wrapped around him, and opens his eyes in bleary recognition of Sirius.

“Healer’s done?” he asks, his voice muzzy with rawness.

“Healer’s done, James is gone, both send optimistic regards,” Sirius murmurs. “That St. Cloud is a phenomenal wizard to have in your back pocket, fucking hell. We have to send Dumbledore a bottle of wine for setting up this Protean system.”

Remus chuckles softly to himself and through his own sleepiness, Sirius doesn’t think he’ll ever hear a more perfect sound in his lifetime.

“He’s been kind to my family,” he says, reaching over with his good hand to twist a lock of Sirius’ flyaway hair around his finger. “I nearly worshipped him as a boy, did I ever tell you?”

“You’ve mentioned crushes on people, but not the specifics.” Sirius yawns wide and long, nuzzling into Remus’ with care to not disturb any of his bandages or bruises.

“He’s a terrifyingly smart professor, and always helped us in the interim where the wolf was too powerful for our little basement but I wasn't off to Hogwarts yet. Spent a lot of time in catacombs at Oxford each month that he got me and da access to.”

“Young Remus had good taste, he’s quite handsome.”

“And quite spoken for, always has been as long as I’ve known him. One of the Rhetoric masters and he have made a nice little life for themselves in the countryside.” Remus sighs, winces, shrugs a slow little knot out of one of his shoulders. “I think I’ve always been at least a little bit in love with anybody who can keep a secret and has a penchant for healing.”

He looks knowingly at Sirius and smiles through the barracks of repair on his face and body, and they meet in a gentle kiss that warms Sirius like putty. Contrary to the normal awakening jot of energy that accompanies Remus’ kisses, Sirius feels his limbs becoming heavier and the need for sleep intensifying. _Ah, but the news—_

“Well, today isn’t a complete wash yet,” Sirius says airily as he rousts himself for this last little bit of energy. Remus pulls an inquisitive look as best he can beyond the bandage on his brow, the kind that translates vaguely into _My ruined ulna begs to differ, but please continue._

“What did James do this time?” he asks, and Sirius kisses his shoulder tenderly through a sleepy smile for the irony of his unknowing. Despite himself, he feels happy tears prick at his eyes again and curls closer to Remus like the shelter of sunshine. He thinks forward to the years ahead of them, untold and blank-slate with at least twelve of the reasons to be terrified lain out in front of him in the damage rending Remus’ body, but he can’t find it in him to be scared. He digs, and for the first time all he can unearth at the very center of his deepest self is hope. He closes his eyes, forms the words on his tongue, and feels himself drifting off almost before he finishes the flawless sentence;

“Lily’s to have a son.”

- _fin_ -


End file.
